The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) recently accepted a proposal submitted by the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) to create a Street Address Standard. The objective of this effort is to create data content, classification, transfer, and quality standards for street addresses. This work will build on previous FGDC address standard efforts.

Street addresses are the location identifiers most widely used by state and local government and the public. Street addresses are critical information for administrative, emergency response, research, marketing, mapping, GIS, routing and navigation, and many other purposes. Because they have evolved over many decades, under the control of thousands of local jurisdictions in many different record and database formats to serve many purposes, different address formats and types pose a number of complex geoprocessing and modeling issues. As a consequence, government agencies struggle with these issues as they seek to integrate large, mission-critical files into master address repositories.

For the past six years, URISA has sponsored and organized the annual Street Smart and Address Savvy Conference (endorsed last year by the Census Bureau, National Emergency Number Association [NENA], and United States Postal Service), covering a broad spectrum of addressing issues and practices. Further, within the past year URISA signed Memoranda of Understanding with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and FGDC, making URISA a USGS partner and FGDC stakeholder.

With its broad-based membership of practitioners and subject matter experts in the government, private, and academic sectors, URISA with the support of NENA will convene and lead an Address Standards Working Group that will include representatives from interested federal, state, regional, and local government agencies; private-sector consultants; and professional associations.

The results of this consensus-driven process will be submitted through the FGDC's formal standards approval process. If they are accepted, the Census Bureau will maintain the standards under the auspices of its duties as theme lead for the Federal Subcommittee on Cultural, Society, and Demographics.

For more information, contact URISA (tel.: 847-824-6300, e-mail: info@urisa.org).